I was exposed to the band’s music via a friend in Sydney, way before they became really big… it must have been the beginning of 1990, I’m not sure anymore. I thought they were pretty cool... I bought their music, saw them live, even followed Trent Reznor on Twitter a few years later.

Since I started making music myself, though, I somehow lost touch with other artists’ whereabouts. Lately I stumbled upon the news that Trent Reznor is now the Chief Creative Officer for Apple Music.

After getting over my initial open-mouthed reaction, I let out a sigh of relief...

It seems everywhere we turn these days there’s talk about music streaming and its effects on the artist and the music industry in general...

There is no doubt that the decline of physical record/cassette/CD sales is a harsh reality that's impacted musicians in a big way… not to mention the closing-down of record shops around the world, the absence of music television programmes, chart shows, radio request shows… Whichever way one looks at it, today's artist is the one profiting the least out of the schema we call the music industry (a term I dislike with a passion!). But fact is fact and music is, unfortunately, primarily seen as a business and secondly as a creative means of expression. I can tell you from personal experience, too, that unless you’ve been signed by a major label, telling someone that you make music for a living is ultimately going to be followed by the statement, “as a hobby, yes... but what job do actually do?”… !

To my ears, the entire term 'music industry’ is wrong… the words ‘music’ and ‘industry’ being shoved into one area is possibly the whole reason why the majority of musicians are where we are and not where we should be.

When I say ‘profiting’, though, I’m not only referring to the monetary side of music, but to having any say whatsoever as to your own future as a musician. Maybe I’m naive in thinking this way, but that’s why I was so happy to see that Trent Reznor is now making decisions at Apple Music…

Trent started small, just like all of us did… Trent has worked very, VERY hard to be where he is right now and he has my FULL respect for that. Trent has also watched the decline of music download revenues first hand and, while he probably isn’t struggling for money, he is just as directly affected by the way the music business has changed in the last 30 years as the rest of us. The difference is, while most of us are just sitting back complaining about it, Trent has decided to stand up and change something; be the voice for us all, so to speak. Because the fact is, the average consumers in 2016 just aren't willing to pay for music anymore the way they used to. And now with the decline in music downloads, it leaves me wondering what the future is going to look like for all of us who make music for a living…

But Trent is making changes… think his DMCA Copyright Law Petition which was signed by many major artists like Paul McCartney and U2 in the hope of bringing reform to an outdated Digital Music Copyright Law that they rightly feel has been exploiting music artists/songwriters… that alone gives me so much hope... and there’s so much more where that came from…